There were not enough helicopters to repair the breeched
levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor
are there enough Louisiana National Guards available
to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.

The situation is the same in Mississippi.

The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fools
mission in Iraq.

The National Guard is in Iraq because fanatical neoconsevatives
in the Bush administration were determined to invade
the Middle East and because the incompetent Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals,
who told him there were not enough regular troops available
to do the job.

After the invasion, the arrogant Rumsfeld found out
that the generals were right. The National Guard was
called up to fill in the gaping gaps.

Now the Guardsmen, trapped in
the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families
they left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering
if the floating bodies are family members. None
know where their dislocated families are, but, shades
of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.

The mayor of New Orleans was counting on helicopters
to put in place massive sandbags to repair the levee.
However, someone called the few helicopters away to
rescue people from rooftops. The rising water overwhelmed
the massive pumping stations, and New Orleans disappeared
under deep water.

What a terrible casualty of the Iraqi
war--one of our oldest and most beautiful cities, a
famous city, a historic city.

Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the US government
had made no preparations in the event Hurricane Katarina
brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No contingency plan
existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the
Corp of Engineers trying to assemble the material and
equipment to save New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.

Even worse, articles in the New Orleans
Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management
chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration
slashed the funding for the Corp of Engineers' projects
to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted
the money to the Iraq war.

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson
Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8,
2004): "It appears that the money has been moved
in the president's budget to handle homeland security
and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price
we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't
be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make
the case that this is a security issue for us."

Why can't the US government focus
on America's needs and leave other countries alone?
Why are American troops in Iraq instead of protecting
our own borders from a mass invasion by illegal immigrants?
Why are American helicopters blowing up Iraqi homes
instead of saving American homes in New Orleans?

How can the Bush administration be so incompetent as
to expose Americans at home to dire risks by exhausting
American resources in foolish foreign adventures? What
kind of "homeland security" is this?

All Bush has achieved by invading Iraq is to kill and
wound thousands of people while destroying America's
reputation. The only beneficiaries are oil companies
capitalizing on a good excuse to jack up the price of
gasoline and Osama bin Laden's recruitment.

What we have is a Republican war for oil company profits
while New Orleans sinks beneath the waters. [...]

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic
appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly
publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia,
the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford
University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is "very upset"
that an attempt to fix the breach in the levee at the
17th Street canal has failed, and he said the challenges
that the city is facing have "escalated to another
level." [...]

Nagin said the sandbagging was scheduled
for midday, but the Blackhawk helicopters needed to
help did not show up. He said the sandbags were ready
and all the helicopter had to do was "show up."
He said after his afternoon helicopter tour of the city,
he was assured that officials had a plan and a timeline
to drop the sandbags on the levee breach.

He said he was told that the helicopters may have been
diverted to rescue about 1,000 people in a church, but
he is still not sure who gave the order.

He advised people still trapped in New Orleans to evacuate
to the west bank area if they can safely get there.

"If they can't, (they should) seek higher ground,"
the mayor said.

He said the water that is flowing out of the breach,
which is about a 2-block breach at the 17th Street canal,
will continue to flow "unimpeded at an accelerated
level within 12 to 15 hours." [...]

Comment: So
we see that someone in the Bush administration consciously
chose to do nothing about the breach in the levee and
allow ever more sea water to pour into New Orleans.
It now seems clear also that someone in the Bush administration
had been planning for a long time to leave the city
exposed...

In
2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans
was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S.
But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control
funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane
Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for
food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly
dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city
of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico.
But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely
be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could
be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the
Bush administration ordered that the research not be
undertaken.

After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created
the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project,
in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated
levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating
that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the
three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a
terrorist attack on New York City.

But by 2003 the federal funding
for the flood control project essentially dried up as
it was drained into the Iraq war.In
2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested
by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain
by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning
of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2
percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district
of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate
had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees,
but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane
published a series on the federal funding problem, and
whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No
one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the
wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions
are being asked about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands
to developers almost certainly also contributed to the
heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal
task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding
New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the
Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a
foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands,
a policy launched by his father's administration and
bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his
approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army
Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection
Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands
unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading
environmental groups conducted a joint expert study,
concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection
New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much
less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no
way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it
comes to wetlands protection," said one of the
report's authors. The chairman of the White House's
Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study
as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody
loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will
be science based," President Bush declared in June
2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection
Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United
Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided
it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy,"
and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's
annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its
first comprehensive "Report on the Environment,"
stating, "Climate change has global consequences
for human health and the environment," the White
House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar
conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year,
Bush successfully stymied any common action on global
warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate
impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans,
which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists,
including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement,
"Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking":
"Successful application of science has played a
large part in the policies that have made the United
States of America the world's most powerful nation and
its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ...
Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents
and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing
policies. The administration of George W. Bush has,
however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion
of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends
must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the
trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special
interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration
announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after
contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific
evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's
scientific advisory board. The United Nations special
envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration
of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda --
the result of the administration's evangelical Christian
agenda of "abstinence."

When the chief of the Bureau
of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was
ordered by the White House to delete its study that
African-Americans and other minorities are subject to
racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused
to buckle under, he was forced out of his job.
When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting
oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract
awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at
which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was
demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At
the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political
appointee lacking professional background, drew up a
plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit
any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious
materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered
a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World
War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And
he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability
to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan."
Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named
Desire."

I have finally reconnected with my best friend who
is a paramedic who was sent from Georgia 2 days ago
to Gulf Port, Mississippi before the hurricane hit.

He just reached me within the last 10 mins via emergency
cell phone to tell me he was alive.

Thousands of bodies have been discovered throughout
Mississippi in Gulf Port, Waveland,Hancock County,Bay
of St.Louis.

They are hanging in trees and they are pulling them
out 30 at a time. Entire families found drowned in their
homes and washing up on shore.

The stories he could tell me were brief. National Guard
is on the scene and arresting anyone seen on the streets.

The numbers are staggering and
what I have been told tonight will shake people to their
foundation as the numbers will be coming out in the
next 24-hours of just how many people have actually
perished in these and 3 other beach communities.

For schoolteacher Jared Wood the
scariest moment of Hurricane Katrina was not the killer
winds or waters, it was the looter threatening to thrash
him for trying to take his picture.

With most of New Orleans submerged and thousands of
people trapped by waters strewn with bodies, authorities
also fought an outbreak of plundering by locals taking
away food, appliances, jewels, clothes and even guns.

But when their food ran out in Katrina's wake, the
29-year-old Wood and his companion Erin O'Shea, 28,
both normally law-abiding teachers from upper New York
State, judged it necessary to join the larcenous throngs.

"We looted a store because
we had no food and we had to do something,"
Wood told AFP outside their French Quarter hotel while
waiting for a ride to nearby Baton Rouge. "It was
really scary while we were in there."

The pair said they leapt through a smashed window of
a local Winn-Dixie supermarket and started to stock
up on soup, power bars and soy milk while other looters
gathered armfuls of soda and beer.

"We were trying to get stuff that would sustain
us. Some people were going by and they had a plant,"
O'Shea said, shrugging in disbelief at the range of
items hauled away.

She said that in the aftermath of Katrina, an intelligence
network sprouted on the largely deserted streets of
New Orleans letting looters know where the best pickings
were.

"It's all hush hush, word of mouth thing. We've
been finding out just by traveling around," O'Shea
said.

But any camraderie among thieves stopped when Wood
whipped out a camera and tried to take pictures of the
looting in the Winn-Dixie shop.

"This guy was saying, 'Give me your camera or
I'm going to beat the crap out of you,'" O'Shea
said.

The pair saw one man scrounging among shelves of pharmaceuticals,
apparently for drugs. But the teachers were more interested
in getting their hands on O'Shea's favorite tabloid
fare.

"So we took her Star magazine and we got out,"
Wood said.

Jeanette Brase, a 76-year-old retiree from the midwestern
state of Iowa who was visiting New Orleans with her
husband, said the looting was the only frightening part
of her ordeal.

She never thought she would witness such behavior first-hand,
Brase said after seeing looters stream in and out of
a local pharmacy: "It's something you hear about
and see on TV."

"It's actually kind of sickening. I don't know
if they (the police) can stop them or if they just have
too much to do."

Rosemary Rimmer-Clay, 51, a social worker from Brighton,
England, who was here with her two grown sons, said
Katrina made her trip "90 percent boredom and 10
percent sheer terror."

"The police said there was rioting and we saw
people running with bags full of inappropriate items.
It looked quite dodgy," she said. "It felt
like a film set and we were in the middle of it."

Authorities sought to tighten security, with gangs
of armed men reported roaming the city and one store
emptied of its entire collection of weapons, according
to the Times-Picayune newspaper.

One police officer was shot in the head but was expected
to survive, the newspaper said.

In the Mississippi town of Biloxi, thieves were reported
to have taken slot machines from devastated casinos.

Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco said looting was
a growing problem but not the top priority. "We
don't like looters one bit, but first and foremost is
search and rescue," she said.

At least one looter, however, was feeling pangs of
remorse.

O'Shea said she and Wood had to return home by Tuesday
in time for the start of classes and "I plan on
sending a check to the Winn-Dixie for 50 dollars when
I get back."

Comment: Speaking
of "looters", Katrina has provided the mainstream
press with an opportunity to reveal their fundamental
racist beliefs. Consider the following two pictures
with their captions taken from Yahoo News:

Two
residents wade through chest-deep water after
finding bread and soda from
a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came
through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana

A
young man walks through chest deep flood water
afterlooting
a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug.
30, 2005. Flood waters continue to rise in New Orleans
after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage when
it

Tuesday night, as water rose to
20 feet through most of New Orleans, CNN relayed an
advisory that food in refrigerators would last only
four hours, would have to be thrown out. The
next news item from CNN was an indignant bellow about
"looters" of 7/11s and a Walmart.Making
no attempt to conceal the racist flavor of the coverage,
the press openly describes white survivors as "getting
food from a flooded store," while blacks engaged
in the same struggle for survival are smeared as "looters."

The reverence for property is now the underlying theme
of many newscasts, with defense of The Gap being almost
the first order of duty for the forces of law and order.
But the citizens looking for clothes to wear and food
to eat are made of tougher fiber and are more desperate
than the polite demonstrators who guarded The Gap and
kindred chains in Seattle in 1999. The police in New
Orleans are only patrolling in large armed groups. One
spoke of "meeting some resistance," as if
the desperate citizens of New Orleans were Iraqi insurgents.

While I must admit the footage of two NOPD ladies
looting a Wal-Mart was priceless, the sanctimonious
and unmistakably racist tone of the correspondent
(and Tucker himself) was apalling. This was certainly
not confined to MSNBC, though.

A sidenote: During the shot
inside the Wal-Mart, the correspondent hounded the
looters, who were loading up on supplies and a few
choice gifts for their children, one man said to him
that no one was worried about their lives, so why
in the bloody hell would he worry about Wal-Mart's
profit-loss ratio? Though
I don't endorse looting, he has a point there.
Cable news focused sharply on the forgotten and abandoned
of New Orleans while not mentioning once (I withstood
it all for around 3.5 hours) that these were folks
of our very own Third World, the most economically
disenfranchised class in the States. Where was the
bus convoy to guide them to safety. In state government
and FEMA terms, that would've been a pennance.

Also on Tuesday night the newscasts were reporting
that in a city whose desperate state is akin the Dacca
in Bangladesh a few years ago, there
were precisely seven Coast Guard helicopters in operation.Where are the National Guard helicopters?
Presumably strafing Iraqi citizens on the roads outside
Baghdad and Fallujah.

As the war's unpopularity soars, there will be millions
asking, Why is the National Guard in Iraq, instead of
helping the afflicted along the Gulf in the first crucial
hours, before New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile turn into
toxic toilet bowls with thousands marooned on the tops
of houses?

As thousands of trapped residents face the real prospect
of perishing for lack of a way out of the flooding city,
Bush's first response was to open the spigots of the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the request of oil companies
and to order the EPA to eliminate Clean Air standards
at power plants and oil referiners across the nation,
supposedly to increase fuel supplies--a goal long sought
by his cronies at the big oil companies.

In his skittish Rose Garden press conference, Bush
told the imperiled people of the Gulf Coast not to worry,
the Corps of Engineers was on the way to begin the reconstruction
of the Southland. But these are
the same cadre of engineers, who after three years of
work, have yet to get water and electrical power running
in Baghdad for more than three hours a day.

It didn't have to be this bad. The entire city of New
Orleans needn't have been lost. Hundreds of people need
not have perished. Yet, it now
seems clear that the Bush administration sacrificed
New Orleans to pursue its mad war on Iraq.

As the New Orleans Times-Picayune has reported in a
devastating series of articles over the last two years,
city and state officials and the Corps of Enginners
had repeatedly requested funding to strengthen the levees
along Lake Pontchartrain that breeched in the wake of
the flood. But the Bush administration rebuffed the
requests repeatedly, reprograming the funding from levee
enhancement to Homeland Security and the war on Iraq.

This year the Bush administration
slashed funding for the New Orleans Corps of Engineers
by $71.2 million, a stunning 44.2 percent reduction
from its 2001 levels. A Corps report noted at
the time that "major hurricane and flood protection
projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms.
. . . Also, a study to determine ways to protect the
region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved
for now."

Work on the 17th Street levee, which
breached on Monday night, came to a halt earlier this
summer for the lack of $2 million.

"It appears that the money has been moved in the
president's budget to handle homeland security and the
war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay,"
Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson
Parish, Louisiana told the Times-Picayune in June of
last year. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees
can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can
to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

These are damning revelations that
should fuel calls from both parties for Bush's resignation
or impeachment.

The greatest concern for poor people in these days
has come from President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who
­ fresh from a chat with Fidel Castro, has announced
that Venezuela will be offering America's poor discounted
gas through its Citgo chain. He's says his price will
knock out the predatory pricing at every American pump.
Citgo should issue to purchasers of each tankful of
gas vouchers for free medical consultations via the
internet with the Cuban doctors in Venezuela.

No politician in America has raised the issue of predatory
pricing as gasoline soars above $3. The last time there
was any critical talk about the oil companies was thirty
years ago.

Maybe the terrible disaster along
the Gulf coast will awaken people to the unjust ways
in which our society works. That's often the
effect of natural disasters, as with the Mexican earthquake,
where the laggardly efforts of the police prompted ordinary
citizens to take matters into their own hands.

Comment: If
anything, Katrina has added to the calls to pull out
of Iraq:

The men and women of the National
Guard shouldn't be killing in Iraq. They should be helping
in New Orleans and Biloxi.

The catastrophic hurricane was an act of God. But the
U.S. war effort in Iraq is a continuing act of the president.
And now, that effort is hampering the capacity of the
National Guard to save lives at home.

Before the flooding of New Orleans drastically escalated
on Tuesday, the White House tried to disarm questions
that could be politically explosive. "To those
of you who are concerned about whether or not we're
prepared to help, don't be, we are," President
Bush said. "We're in place, we've got equipment
in place, supplies in place, and once the -- once we're
able to assess the damage, we'll be able to move in
and help those good folks in the affected areas."

Echoing the official assurances, CBS
News reported: "Even though more than a third of
Mississippi's and Louisiana's National Guard troops
are either in Iraq or supporting the war effort, the
National Guard says there are more than enough at home
to do the job."

But after New Orleans levees
collapsed and the scope of the catastrophe became more
clear, such reassuring claims lost credibility.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday: "With
thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in
Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled
to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday
-- calling up Army bands and water-purification teams,
among other units, and requesting help from distant
states and the active-duty military."

The back-page Post story added: "National Guard
officials in the states acknowledged that the scale
of the destruction is stretching the limits of available
manpower while placing another extraordinary demand
on their troops -- most of whom have already served
tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense
missions since 2001."

Speaking for the Mississippi National Guard, Lt. Andy
Thaggard said: "Missing the personnel is the big
thing in this particular event. We need our people."
According to the Washington Post,
the Mississippi National Guard "has a brigade of
more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq" while "Louisiana
also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad."

National Guard troops don't belong in Iraq. They should
be rescuing and protecting in Louisiana and Mississippi,
not patrolling and killing in a country that was invaded
on the basis of presidential deception. They should
be fighting the effects of flood waters at home -- helping
people in the communities they know best -- not battling
Iraqi people who want them to go away.

Let's use the Internet today to forward
and post this demand so widely that the politicians
in Washington can no longer ignore it:

Bring the National Guard home. Immediately.

Norman Solomon is the author of the new book "War
Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning
Us to Death."

Comment: When
the announcement was made that Bush was going to cut
his vacation short and visit the hurricane-stricken
areas, Rove was no doubt wringing his hands with glee
in the background and imagining how the Bush's arrival
would play out: the Commander in Chief would gallop
into New Orleans in a white helicopter, personally unloading
food and supplies and handing them to a family in need.
Then, while holding hands, everyone would sing God Bless
America. Bush's abysmal ratings would get a boost, and
everyone would forget all about Cindy Sheehan.

Unfortunately for the Neocons, their valiant efforts
to "create reality" seemed to have been rudely
interrupted by too many people asking too many good
questions. The question of why National Guard troops
are in Iraq instead of New Orleans is one that cannot
be suppressed or spun in favor of the Bush regime; it
ties directly to the issue that led to Bush's low ratings.
When you toss in the fact that money that should have
gone to reinforce the levees was diverted for the Iraqi
invasion and "homeland security", it seems
Katrina will be a political disaster for Bush.

Washington knew that this day could
come at any time, and it knew the things that needed
to be done to protect the citizens of New Orleans.
But in the tradition of the riverboat gambler, the
Bush administration decided to roll the dice on its
fool's errand in Iraq, and on a tax cut that mainly
benefitted the rich. Now Bush
has lost that gamble, big time.

It will be interesting to see what he does from here
on out in an attempt to save himself...

WASHINGTON - Hurricane
Katrina is likely to have only a modest impact on the
U.S. economy as long as the hit to the energy sector
proves transitory, White House economic adviser Ben
Bernanke said on Wednesday.

"Clearly, it's going to affect the Gulf Coast
economy quite a bit," Bernanke told CNBC television.
"That's going to be enough to have at least a noticeable
or at least some impact on the aggregate (national)
data.

"Looking forward ... reconstruction is going to
add jobs and growth to the economy," he added.
"As long as we find that
the energy impact is only temporary and there's not
permanent damage to the infrastructure, my guess is
that the effects on the overall economy will be fairly
modest."

He added that most indications suggested the effect
on the energy sector would indeed be temporary.

Bernanke, chairman of President George W. Bush's Council
of Economic Advisers, said the administration's decision
to release oil from emergency stockpiles should be helpful.

"There are some petroleum refineries that don't
have crude and by allowing them to draw from the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve they will be able to produce more
gasoline," he said.

Bernanke said the bond market's reaction to the hurricane,
pushing market-set interest rates lower, showed more
concern about the potential hit to growth than to the
risk of a broad inflation surge due to soaring energy
prices.

"I think that is a vote
of confidence in the Federal Reserve," the former
Fed governor said. "People are confident
that inflation will be low despite these shocks to gasoline
and oil prices."

Comment: This
article appeared yesterday. Today, Bush himself was
a tad less optimistic about the effects of an oil shortage:

WASHINGTON -- President Bush sought
Thursday to reassure victims of Hurricane Katrina that
the federal government was doing its best to send aid
to the thousands of displaced and stranded people.

"I understand the anxiety of people on the ground,"
Bush told ABC's "Good Morning America." "...
But I want people to know there's a lot of help coming."

Bush said he would visit the affected areas, but the
trip was still being coordinated.

Bush surveyed Katrina's destruction from Air Force
One on his way from Crawford, Texas, to Washington Wednesday.

Back at the White House, he
announced a massive federal mobilization to help victims
of the storm, but said recovery "will take years."

"We're dealing with one of the worst natural disasters
in our nation's history," Bush said in an address
from the Rose Garden, surrounded by members of his Cabinet.
"I can't tell you how devastating the sights were."

"The folks on the Gulf Coast are going to need
the help of this country for a long time. This is going
to be a difficult road. The challenges that we face
on the ground are unprecedented, but there's no doubt
in my mind that we're going to succeed." (Transcript)

He told communities affected by the storm, "The
country stands with you" and pledged, "We'll
do all in our power to help you."

Bush announced that he has created a Cabinet-level
task force to coordinate hurricane relief efforts across
federal agencies, headed by Homeland Security Director
Michael Chertoff.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), Michael Brown, will be in charge of the federal
response on the ground in Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama.

The White House also announced Wednesday
that Bush has asked his father, former President George
H.W. Bush, and former President Bill Clinton to spearhead
an international relief effort for hurricane victims,
similar to the effort they undertook for victims of
last year's tsunami in South Asia.

Bush said the federal government's first priority is
to rescue those still trapped and provide medical assistance.
FEMA, the Coast Guard and the Department of Defense
have sent resources to help with the search-and-rescue
effort, he said.

The federal government also will use more than 400
trucks from the Department of Transportation to bring
food, water and supplies to those whose homes have been
damaged or destroyed, and plans are being made to provide
housing, education and health care for the displaced,
he said.

The president said the federal government would also
undertake a "comprehensive recovery effort"
to rebuild devastated communities and restore infrastructure,
including roads and bridges wiped out by Katrina, an
effort he said would take years. [...]

Bush also braced the country for a
coming surge in energy prices in the wake of the destruction
Katrina wrought on oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Department of Energy is releasing supplies from
the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to limit disruptions
of supplies to oil refineries, which "will help
take some pressure off of gas prices," and the
Environmental Protection Agency has waived rules requiring
low-pollution blends in some areas in order to increase
availability of gas and diesel, he said.

"But our citizens must understand
this storm has disrupted the capacity to make gasoline
and distribute gasoline," the president said.
[...]

Comment: Indeed,
and Bush's comments seemed to be putting it mildly based
on several articles we found...

By Dan Roberts, Jonathan Birchall,
Kevin Allison and Amy Yee in New York
Financial Times
August 31 2005 23:06

Shippers on the
Mississippi river are warning of disruption to supply
chains and logistics across North America as the commercial
impact of Hurricane Katrina extends far beyond initial
worries about energy markets.

The port of New Orleans, a major
gateway for commodities from grain to steel, remains
closed while damage to navigational aids and
debris also prevents larger ocean-going vessels from
entering the Mississippi.

Rick Couch, president of Osprey shipping line, said:
"This comes at a very bad
time with the US agricultural harvest just a few weeks
away. Some traffic can be diverted to Houston and ports
upriver, but congestion is already building up."

Chemical plants and manufacturers have also warned
that damage to local transport infrastructure could
hinder recovery efforts after earlier shutdowns.

Big US retailers have been pushing to restock and resupply
their stores in the hurricane-affected areas, with Wal-Mart
and Home Depot setting up emergency centres at their
headquarters to co-ordinate operations.

But the direct impact of the storm on sales at national
chains will be offset by their comparatively limited
exposure in Louisiana and Mississippi, whose combined
population of around 7.5m is less than half the size
of Florida's 17.4m. New Orleans itself is the 35th largest
retail market in the US in terms of square footage of
retail space, according to the International Council
of Shopping Centers.

Traditionally, hurricane damage has resulted in stronger
sales for home improvement retailers.

"I see complete disaster with
flooding prevalent, so while Home Depot and Lowes might
benefit in the longer term, in the short term I don't
think there's going to be much of anything going on,"
said Bill Sims, a retail analyst at Citigroup.

Higher fuel prices and operational disruptions resulting
from the storm will add to problems faced by struggling
US airlines such as Delta Air Lines and Flyi, the parent
company of Independence Air.

"Delta is already bleeding
cash and at near-term risk of insolvency. The added
financial pressure may hasten an already likely bankruptcy
filing, which will probably occur within weeks,"
said Standard Poors, the debt ratings agency. "Closure
of refineries...is already raising gasoline prices significantly
and is having an effect on jet fuel, as well,"
S&P said.

Airlines and oil companies
are working on plans to supply jet fuel to at least
ten U.S. airports that could be shut down due to a lack
of jet fuel caused by refinery and pipeline shutdowns
from hurricane Katrina. The airports in most jeopardy
for closure include Atlanta, Charlotte, Ft. Lauderdale,
Ft. Myers, Orlando, Tampa, Washington Dulles and West
Palm Beach.

AAG has learned that ChevronTexaco and Shell had cargoes
loaded prior to the shutdowns destined for Florida ports.
However, with the Colonial and Plantation pipelines
shutdown due to a lost of power it could be sometime
for shipments to reach airports from Atlanta to Washington
D.C.

With future supply uncertain, airlines are working
on plans to allocate jet fuel at critically short airports.
While some airports may have up to five days of supply
we have to expect that we won't receive additional shipments
for some time. We either run down to flumes or we try
to make it last as long as possible, said one airline
fuel manager. Today, airlines are working on plans to
allocate fuel in hopes of extending available supply
at problem locations.

Initial reports vary as to the extent of damage to
Gulf Coast refining. But a longer
term problem may not be refining infrastructure but
providing shelter for refinery workers.

"One of our refineries is scheduled to be back
up soon but our real problem is finding housing for
our workers. Most of their homes are destroyed or under
water. Unless we can solve the
housing problem we will not be fully operational for
some time," said
one major oil company representative.

Comment: Already
in New Orleans, those who take food to feed their families
and have dark skin are labeled "looters".
The BBC
reports survivors shooting at rescue helicopters.
Rescue operations were called
off as more National Guard troops arrived not to
rescue those still stranded in the city, but to
prevent more looting. Call us crazy, but if those
stranded in New Orleans aren't going to be rescued,
then they have to eat and obtain fresh water somehow.
In the Louisiana heat, dehydration can be a big problem,
especially if you are forced to camp out on the roof
of your house. Not surprisingly, the population is angry
with the Bush administration.

Martial law has been declared in parts of New Orleans.

Now imagine if there are nation-wide shortages of gas,
certain foodstuffs, and other supplies...

It would appear that Katrina may also provide the Bush
government with the opportunity to take America one
step closer toward nation-wide martial law.

By STACY SHELTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/31/05

Lines at Atlanta area gas pumps
grew along with prices this afternoon as word spread
of possible fuel shortages.

By noon today, several metro Atlanta gas stations had
posted prices above $3.15 per gallon. Some
metro area stations were charging as much as $4.75 a
gallon, according to a Web site that keeps track
of such things, www.atlantagasprices.com.

Prices were rising so fast in some
areas that signs at gas stations no longer matched what
was being charged at the pumps.

Declaring that there's "credible evidence"
of price-gouging at the gas
pumps, Gov. Sonny Perdue late Wednesday signed an executive
order threatening to impose heavy fines on gasoline
retailers who overcharge Georgia drivers.

"When you prey upon the fears and the paranoia,
it is akin to looting, and it is abominable," Perdue
said at a hastily called, 6 p.m. press conference.

The anti-gouging law does not prevent retailers from
selling gas at higher rates but bars them from charging
what the governor called "unreasonable or egregious"
prices. It was last used after Hurricane Ivan hit Georgia.

Perdue also urged motorists to limit Labor Day vacation
travel if possible.

"There is no reason to panic.
There is plenty of gas on the way. The only way we would
have problems is if people rush out and try to horde
and try to accumulate gasoline they won't need for a
while," the governor said today.

Comment: Of
course, everyone will most likely rush out
and horde gasoline...

As impacts of Hurricane Katrina
affect both the production and transportation of fuel,
gas stations in the Atlanta area
today dramatically jacked up their prices,with
one charging $5.87 a gallon.

WSB-TV in Atlanta confirmed to WND that a retailer
in a rural area outside the city had priced its gas
at $5.87, and the TV station indicated it had another
unconfirmed report of $5.99. [...]

Most Atlanta stations that raised their prices placed
them at between $3.50 and $4.

There were '70s-era gas lines at several stations.

Mike Brown, owner of Georgetown Chevron in Chamblee,
Ga., said his station had run out of gasoline.

"People are just lined
up,'' he told Bloomberg. "All of a sudden, people
are panicking.'' [...]

Meanwhile, several gas stations
in the Milwaukee area ran out of fuel for several hours
at a time, having to post "Out of Gas"
signs at their pumps. The outages were blamed more on
logistical problems on the supply end than any increase
in demand, Forbes.com reported.

As WorldNetDaily reported, many
of the nation's truck drivers are encountering unprecedented
fuel rationing at truck stops as they brace for a spike
in prices.

Hurricane Katrina while
only causing minor damage to NASA spaceport facilities
along the Gulf Coast is surrounded by a region facing
long term recovery problems that will impact the ability
of work to be conducted in the New Orleans area.

Reports say that NASA will relocate critical External
Tank work to Florida and aim for a May 2006 launch window
as the earliest date for a return to flight.

Damaged roofs and water leaks were found throughout
the 832-acre Michoud complex, where Lockheed Martin
manufactures the shuttle's external fuel tank.

In Michoud's main manufacturing building, concrete
roof panels were blown away by winds gusting to 125
mph, leaving a large hole, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Stennis Space Center is used by NASA to test rocket
engines. That facility reported serious roof and water
damage. Stennis is currently being used by state and
federal officials as a shelter and base for relief operations.

If NASA is to meet its March 4-19 launch window, a
newly redesigned fuel tank must leave Michoud by barge
for Kennedy Space Center by mid-November. NASA officials
say the chance of that occurring appears remote. The
next launch window is May 3-22.

LOS ANGELES - Four men, including
the head of a radical Islamic prison gang, were indicted
on federal charges of plotting terrorist attacks against
military facilities, the Israeli Consulate and synagogues
in Los Angeles.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in announcing
the charges Wednesday in Washington, D.C., referred
to the London mass transit attacks in July.

"Some in this country mistakenly believed it could
not happen here. Today we have chilling evidence that
it is possible," he said.

The four conspired to wage war against the U.S. government
through terrorism, kill armed service members and murder
foreign officials, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors contend the plot was orchestrated by Washington,
Patterson and Samana at the behest of James, an inmate
at the California State Prison-Sacramento who founded
the radical group Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh.

According to the indictment, Washington pledged his
loyalty to James "until death by martyrdom"
and sought to establish a JIS cell outside prison with
members with bomb expertise.

Washington, Patterson and Samana - who attended the
same Inglewood mosque - allegedly conducted surveillance
of the Los Angeles targets, as well as Internet research
on Jewish holidays. Law enforcement officials have previously
said that the military facilities included National
Guard sites, though the indictment does not specify.

The attacks were to be carried out with firearms and
other weapons at synagogues during Jewish holidays "to
maximize the number of casualties," authorities
said. Patterson allegedly bought a .223-caliber rifle
in July.

In Los Angeles, authorities said the suspects could
have attacked as soon as the Yom Kippur Jewish holiday
in October.

"Make no mistake about it - we
dodged a bullet here, perhaps many bullets," Los
Angeles police Chief William Bratton said.

To finance the attacks, prosecutors said, Washington,
Patterson and Samana robbed a string of gas stations
in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The case arose after Washington and Patterson were
arrested July 5 by police in suburban Los Angeles for
investigation of robbing the gas stations.

Counterterrorism officials began investigating after
police who searched Washington's apartment said they
found a list of possible terrorism targets. Samana,
a student originally from Pakistan who lived in Inglewood,
was taken into federal custody Aug. 2.

Attorney Winston McKesson, who represents Patterson,
said his client asked him not to comment on the case.
"He will allow the matter to be resolved in court,"
McKesson said.

Jerome Haig, Washington's public defender in the robbery
case, declined to comment because he said he had not
read the indictment. He added that he would not represent
Washington in the federal terrorism case.

James - known as Shakyh Shahaab Murshid, among other
aliases - founded JIS in 1997 while imprisoned for attempted-robbery
in Los Angeles County, prosecutors said. He preached
that the duty of JIS members was to attack enemies of
Islam.

Washington was paroled in November 2004, around the
time authorities say he joined James' group.

James then instructed Washington to recruit five members
without felony convictions and train them to conduct
covert operations, acquire firearms with silencers and
appoint a group member to help produce remotely activated
explosives, prosecutors said.

The FBI recently ordered its agents nationwide to conduct
"threat assessments" of inmates who may have
become radicalized in prison and could commit extremist
violence upon their release. FBI
Director Robert Mueller said authorities have found
no links between al-Qaida or other foreign terror groups
and the alleged plot.

The defendants face life in prison if convicted of
conspiring to kill uniformed members of the U.S. military.
Another count the men face, seditious
conspiracy, has not been widely used in terrorism cases.

Comment: Three
more "American terrorists" have been arrested,
and it seems the Bush government is monitoring countless
others...

An FBI document, released on August 29 by the ACLU,
shows extensive monitoring of a whole bunch of organizations,
ranging from the Aryan World Church and the Christian
Identity movement to animal rights groups, an anti-war
collective, and a leading pro-affirmative action coalition.

The document, dated January 29, 2002, is a summary
of a domestic terrorism symposium that was held six
days previously.

In attendance were the FBI, the Secret Service, the
Michigan State Police, the Michigan State University
police, and Michigan National Guard.

"The purpose of the meeting was
to keep the local, state, and federal law enforcement
agencies apprised of the activities of the various groups
and individuals within the state of Michigan who are
thought to be involved in terrorist activities,"
the document states.

One of those "terrorist groups"
is By Any Means Necessary, which says its aim is "to
defend affirmative action, integration, and fight for
equality."

The FBI document said a detective, whose last name
was blotted out, "presented information on a protest
from February 8-10, 2002, in Ann Arbor, Michigan,"
by the group.

That "protest" was actually
the Second National Conference of the New Civil Rights
Movement, which was co-sponsored by the Reverend Jesse
Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH, with keynote speaker Jonathan
Kozol.

Comment: The Rainbow/PUSH
Coalition's purpose is essentially the same as that
of By Any Means Necessary. Therefore, the FBI must also
think that the Rev. Jesse Jackson is a terrorist...

"We're standing up for education equity, and the
American government is spying on us? That's an outrage,"
says Luke Massie, one of the national co-chairs of By
Any Means Necessary. "This is palpable proof of
what a lot of progressive people have worried about
since 9/11: The Bush Administration is shredding our
Bill of Rights before our eyes."

The February 8-10 conference was designed to build
public support for affirmative action just as the Supreme
Court was deciding two Michigan affirmative action cases.

"The timing of this shows the political motivation
of the Bush Administration," says Shanta Driver,
the group's other national co-chair. "We're completely
nonviolent. But it's no surprise to us that people who
are devoted to a new civil rights movement and the cause
of equality would be targeted for this kind of surveillance
and attack."

The FBI document acknowledged that
the group was not violent. "Michigan State Police
has information that in the past demonstrations by this
group have been peaceful," the document states.

The FBI and Michigan law enforcement also discussed
the Animal Liberation Front, as well as a local group.
"Michigan State University (MSU) Public Safety
. . . presented information on a group called East Lansing
Animal Rights Movement," the document states. Then,
after blotting out information about a student at Michigan
State, the document adds: "MSU Public Safety feels
that this group has approximately 12-15 members at this
time."

On the web, ELARM identifies itself as a 'grassroots
animal rights advocacy group' that 'believes strongly
in the value of all animals, human or non-human, and
therefore opposes any and all forms of animal exploitation.
Our purpose is to educate the public regarding animal
rights issues, and to expose and oppose animal abuse
wherever it is found.'

The group actually is defunct now,
according to Julie Hartman, who says she revived it
in 2001 only to see it fold two years later.

"We did a couple of circus protests and that kind
of thing," she says.

She got a copy of the FBI document last week.

"I was really surprised, considering
we never once broke the law, that they would spend the
time investigating us," she says.

The fact that the Michigan State University police
estimated that there were twelve to fifteen members
in her group creeps her out, she says.

"That seems to indicate that they would have to
have come to a meeting to find out how many people were
involved," she notes. "That actually made
me start thinking, who was coming to our meetings?"

She believes the university police department has skewed
priorities.

"It's certainly a waste of their
resources," she says. "This is a large university.
The number of rapes on this campus is astounding. The
police always complain they don't have enough resources
to do their job, but they're spending their resources
to spy on peaceful groups! That's really just sickening."

The Michigan State University police gave no comment.

Another local group that law enforcement linked to
ELARM is called Direct Action. Interestingly,
the document notes that both groups had demonstrated
against the FBI local office because of "perceived
injustices by law enforcement." Included
as an attachment to the FBI document was a clipping
from the Lansing State Journal of January 19, 2002,
about the protest, which was ironically entitled: "Dozens
march against terrorism." The first sentence reads:
"Dozens of students and others marched Friday to
protest racial profiling and terrorism - which they
say includes United States military action in Afghanistan."

On its website Direct Action says,
'We desire to challenge the calls for retribution, endless
war, and destruction of civil liberties. Direct Action
also wants to defend the gains made by the movement
against corporate power that was birthed in this country
on the streets of Seattle.'

Primarily a youth-based group, Direct Action is now
focusing a lot of its work on counter-recruitment efforts.

Tommy Simon, a member of Direct Action, dismisses the
terrorist label.

"What is a terrorist? The word is just a propaganda
tool used to dissuade people from getting involved in
activism - especially young people," he says. The
group has never been violent, unlike the Bush Administration,
he adds.

"We've organized protests and spoken out against
the government, but that does not make us a threat in
any way," he says. "We're working for peace
here."

Sarah Mcdonald, a longtime member of Direct Action,
was taken aback by the designation of her group.

"I was shocked," she says.
"I was really disturbed that the FBI is misusing
its power this way. They're trying to squash dissent,
and they're doing that by monitoring anti-war groups
and other groups against the Bush Administration."

The ACLU also condemns the police surveillance and
the use of the label "terrorist" to describe
the peace group and the affirmative action group.

"This document confirms
our fears that federal and state counterterrorism officers
have turned their attention to groups and individuals
engaged in peaceful protest activities," said Ben
Wizner, an ACLU staff attorney. "When the
FBI and local law enforcement identify affirmative action
advocates as potential terrorists, every American has
cause for concern."

Wasn't me, says the FBI.

"A plain reading of the document clearly notes
that there were presentations at the symposium by someone
outside the FBI that discussed the groups By Any Means
Necessary and Direct Action," says an FBI press
office statement of August 29. "The FBI does not
make any representation about these groups in the document
other than to note they were discussed during the symposium."

Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan,
is not impressed with that statement. "What else
can they say, other than we didn't do it, someone else
did?" The point is, she says, law enforcement,
including the FBI, were discussing these political groups
on the assumption that they were "involved in terrorist
activities," as the document states.

"Whenever you give police increasing powers, there's
going to be confusion about where to begin and where
to end," Moss says. "And that's what we're
seeing here."

WASHINGTON - US military authorities
announced changes to the military commissions that will
try detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to make the trials
"more like a judge and jury
model", the
Pentagon said.

But critics of the special tribunals called the changes
"window dressing" that would not lead to fair
and open hearings.

The changes will make the tribunals's presiding officers
function "more like a judge", while positioning
the other panel members more like a jury, said the Pentagon
in a statement.

The presiding officer will decide
most questions of law, the Pentagon said, and the other
panel members will determine commission findings and
decide any sentence of the accused.

In the earlier structure of the commissions,
which began hearing cases last year, the three panel
members together determined findings, decided legal
questions and set sentences.

The Defense Department also clarified rules on the
presence of the accused at his own trial, and his access
to classified information.

Under the new provisions, the accused will be present
except when necessary to protect classified information,
and when the presiding officer rules that admitting
such information would not render the trial unfair,
the Pentagon said.

The changes were made in response to "lessons
learned from military commissions proceedings that began
in late 2004" and "a review of relevant domestic
and international legal standards," as well as
suggestions from outside organizations, it said.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional
Rights, which had strongly criticized the earlier tribunal
setup, assailed the rule changes as "purely semantics
and window dressing" that "do not provide
for substantive improvements or access to fair and open
hearings".

After winning an appeals court challenge to the special
commissions in July, the Pentagon was moving quickly
to try four detained "enemy combatants" at
Guantanamo, whose preliminary hearings last year were
stopped by the court challenge.

The trials of Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the former
chauffeur of
Osama bin Laden, and "Australian Taliban"
David Hicks, could resume in September, according to
military sources.

"The most recent manipulations of the military
commission procedures represent a desperate attempt
to salvage the failed commission process and a confirmation
that Mr. Hicks will not receive a fair trial,"
Joshua Dratel and Major Michael Mori, Hicks's lawyers,
said in a statement.

"The meaningless changes admit
that the military commission is flawed."

Comment: Instead
of making the fascist tribunal hearings "more like
a judge and jury model", why not simply use a real
judge and a real jury? On the one hand, we
are told that the American judicial system is as fair
and just as one will find anywhere. On the other hand,
prisoners in the war on terror - including US citizens
- are tried in kangaroo courts. If American democracy
and justice is so great, why not apply it to those accused
of terrorist acts? Those who are guilty will be found
guilty, and those who are innocent will be acquitted
- right?

WASHINGTON - A high-level contracting
official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's
decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar,
no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was removed from her
job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.

Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps,
told Bunnatine Greenhouse
last month that she was being removed from the senior
executive service, the top rank of civilian government
employees, because of poor performance reviews.

Greenhouse's attorney, Michael Kohn, appealed the decision
Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
saying it broke an earlier commitment to suspend the
demotion until a "sufficient record" was available
to address her allegations.

The Army said last October that it would refer her
complaints to the Pentagon's inspector general. The
failure to abide by the agreement and the circumstances
of the removal "are the hallmark of illegal retaliation,"
Kohn wrote to Rumsfeld.He
said the review Strock cited to justify his action "was
conducted by the very subjects" of Greenhouse's
allegations, including the general.

Carol Sanders, a spokeswoman for the Army Corps, noted
the Department of the Army approves all actions involving
members of the senior executive service.

Greenhouse came to prominence
last year when she went public with her concerns over
the volume of Iraq-related work given to Halliburton
by the Corps without competition. The Houston-based
oil services giant already had a competitively awarded
contract to provide logistics support for the military
in the Middle East and was awarded a no-bid contract
to repair Iraq oil fields on the eve of the war there
in 2003.

Greenhouse complained internally about that contract.
Last fall she started giving interviews to national
publications. In June she testified before a Democrat-sponsored
event on contracting in Iraq.

"I can unequivocally state that
the abuse related to contracts awarded to (Halliburton
subsidiary) KBR represents the most blatant and improper
abuse I have witnessed" in 20 years working on
government contracts, Greenhouse said.

She said the independence of the Corps' contracting
process was compromised in the handling of the contact.

In the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Greenhouse
objected to a decision to give a five-year, no-bid contract
to KBR for putting out the oil fires that Pentagon officials
believed retreating Iraqi troops would set.

BAGHDAD - Mass funerals were being
held across in Iraq for many of the nearly 1,000 Shiite
Muslim pilgrims killed by a stampede on a bridge over
the Tigris River.

Thousands of grieving people continued the grim search
for loved ones on Thursday, as bodies were still being
pulled from the river and refrigerated trucks had been
brought in to handle the overflow from the morgue at
a nearby hospital.

The death toll from the tragedy stood at 965 in what
was by far the largest single loss of life in Iraq since
the US-led invasion in 2003.

Most of the dead were women,
children and the elderly, who were crushed to death,
trampled underfoot or drowned Wednesday as panic
swept through a massive crowd sparked by rumours of
a suicide bomber in their midst.

Another 815 people were injured, and some 200 remained
in hospital, officials said.

The stampede occurred shortly after rebel mortarfire
targeted the nearby Kadhimiyah mosque, killing seven
people and wounding 37, as up to three million Shiites
converged on Baghdad for an annual religious commemoration.
[...]

WASHINGTON - The U.S. war in Iraq
now costs more per month than the average monthly cost
of military operations in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s,
according to a report issued on Wednesday.

The report, entitled
"The Iraq Quagmire" from the Institute for
Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus, both liberal,
anti-war organizations, put the
cost of current operations in Iraq at $5.6 billion per
month. This breaks down to almost $186 million
a day.

"By comparison, the average cost
of U.S. operations in Vietnam over the eight-year war
was $5.1 billion per month, adjusting for inflation,"
it said.

As a proportion of gross domestic product, the Vietnam
War was more significant, costing 12 percent of annual
GDP, compared to 2 percent for the Iraq War. However,
economists said the Iraq war is being financed with
deficit spending and may nearly double the projected
federal budget deficit over the next 10 years.

The U.S. Congress has approved four spending bills
for Iraq so far with funds totaling $204.4 billion and
is expected soon to authorize a further $45.3 billion.

"Broken down per person in the United States,
the cost so far is $727, making the Iraq War the most
expensive military effort in the past 60 years,"
wrote authors Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver.

As public support for the war drops, more politicians,
including some Republicans, have begun to compare it
to Vietnam. [...]

The total cost of the Vietnam War in current dollars
was around $600 billion and there are some experts who
believe the Iraq War will eventually surpass that total.
[...]

Comment: It's
no wonder that money was diverted away from New Orleans
and into the Iraq war - Bush's crusade doesn't come
cheap!

BAGHDAD - A
cameraman for Reuters in Iraq has been ordered by a
secret tribunal to be held without charge in Baghdad's
Abu Ghraib prison until his case is reviewed
within six months, a U.S. military spokesman said on
Wednesday.

Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani was arrested by U.S.
forces on August 8 after a search of his home in the
city of Ramadi. The U.S. military
has refused Reuters requests to disclose why he is being
held. He has not been charged.

His brother, who was detained with him and then released,
said they were arrested after Marines looked at the
images on the journalist's cameras.

"The CRRB has determined that Mr. Mashhadani remains
a threat to the people of Iraq and they recommended
continued internment," Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill
said, referring to a hearing of the Iraqi-U.S. Combined
Review and Release Board held at a secret location in
Baghdad on Monday.

He said Mashhadani would be entitled to a review of
his case within 180 days and would be held at Abu Ghraib.

Rudisill said he would not be allowed
to see an attorney, his family or anyone else for the
first 60 days of his detention, which began in Abu Ghraib
last week.

Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger said:
"I am shocked and appalled that such a decision
could be taken without his having access to legal counsel
of his choosing, his family or his employers.

"I call on the authorities to release him immediately
or publicly air the case against him and give him the
opportunity to defend himself."

SEARCH

Mashhadani's home was searched along with others in
the neighbourhood after shooting in the area.

Such shooting is common in Ramadi, where Sunni Arab
insurgents are active. Reuters assigned Mashhadani to
film such incidents.

"The CRRB Board is an independent and unbiased
board and consists of nine members: six representatives
of the Iraqi government ... and three senior Multi-National
Forces officers," the U.S. military said in a statement
on the case.

Rudisill said he was aware of five
journalists for major news media in detention, including
Mashhadani and another freelance cameraman who has worked
for Reuters, as well as a cameraman for the U.S. television
network CBS.

Journalists for other major international organisations
have recently been released without charge after many
months in custody.

Reuters is urgently seeking a detailed account of any
accusations against Mashhadani.

Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled was killed in Baghdad
on Sunday, apparently by U.S. troops, and cameraman
Haider Kadhem, who was wounded in the same incident,
has been held ever since by the U.S. military for questioning.
Reuters has demanded his immediate release.

Iraqi police said U.S. troops fired
into the car carrying the Reuters team.

Koichiro Matsuura, the director-general of the U.N.
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO,
condemned the killing and urged military forces in Iraq
to ensure journalists can do their work freely.

"I trust that the ongoing U.S. investigation will
explain the circumstances of events fully and pave the
way for improvements in the future," Matsuura said
in the statement.

"This is essential as the ability of the press
to report freely on the situation in Iraq plays a key
role in the future success of the democratic reconstruction
of the country."

I am an American citizen of Jewish
heritage concerned about the methods and doctrines that
the criminal leadership of the Jewish and Zionist hierarchy
have promoted worldwide. I feel that Jewish Americans
need to affirm loyalty to the Constitution of the United
States of America as well as the Ten Commandments and
the Golden Rule, rather than the racist attitudes of
the Talmud and other Jewish scriptures.

My former intelligence friends
are advising that I move quickly to publicize my situation
in order to protect myself through publicity. [...]

Arab and left-wing Knesset members
are seeking a legal change after Israeli
ministers ruled that four Israeli Arabs, killedby an
extreme right-wing Army deserter in protest at the withdrawal
of Gaza settlers, were not eligible for compensation
as victims of terrorism.

The Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon went out of
his way after the murders to say the act was "terrorism"
and suggest that relatives of the victims should get
the same monthly payments as Jewish victims of Palestinian
attacks. But a ministerial committee decided this week
that they would not be counted as terrorism victims
because they were killed by a an ex-soldier who was
acting alone.

Labour Knesset member, Yuli Tamir, wants to amend the
law to ensure the definition of "terrorism"
should cover anyone killed as a result of actions aimed
at foiling government policy.

BESLAN, Russia - Grief mingled
with anger in the ruins of Beslan's School No. 1 on
Thursday as the Russian town marked the first anniversary
of a hostage siege that ended in the deaths of 331 people.

Weeping mothers who lost their children
appealed for asylum abroad, saying they did not want
to live in a country where officials -- who some say
made the death toll worse by botching the rescue operation
-- value human life so little.

In a provincial town 500 km (300 miles) away, President
Vladimir Putin, in a somber black tie, led a minute's
silence for the Beslan victims but he faces tough questioning
on Friday when he is to meet a group of the mothers
in the Kremlin.

Half of Beslan's dead were children. They had, exactly
a year ago, arrived in their smartest clothes for the
start of the academic year, only to be met by heavily-armed
hostage-takers.

In the school's wrecked sports hall, where many of
the victims perished two days later in an explosion
and fire, women pressed their foreheads against photographs
of their dead children that hung in rows on the walls.

In some places, several photographs carrying the same
surname hung next to each other -- a sign that a whole
family had been wiped out in the bloodshed.

Klara Gasinova had brought her granddaughter, 18-month-old
Alyona, to the sports hall to show the child a photo
of her mother, Fatima, and sister, Kristina. Both had
died and Alyona was rescued from the school in the arms
of a soldier.

"We went and laid flowers and lit candles and
we showed Alyona the picture. She said 'Fatima, Fatima',
because that's what she calls her," Gasinova said.

MINUTE'S SILENCE

Visitors had to pass through metal detectors, mirroring
the tight security at schools across Russia as children
arrived for the first day of the new term amid fears
militants could mark the anniversary with new attacks.

Putin was visiting a university in the southern Russian
city of Krasnodar where students, as throughout Russia,
were taking part in traditional celebrations to mark
the first day of term.

"Today, a year on from the terrible tragedy in
Beslan, millions of people in our country and abroad,
all those who know about this terrible catastrophe,
anyone who has a heart, are of course remembering that
nightmare," he said.

"Let us fall quiet for a few
seconds and remember those children, all those who died,
who suffered at the hands of terrorists," Putin
said in televised remarks.

In Beslan, the first day of term for the surviving
children was pushed back out of respect for the dead.

The school was seized by militants from Russia's Chechnya
region, which has been fighting for 10 years for independence
from Moscow.

In a bloody climax two days later, an explosion in
the sports hall prompted security forces to storm the
school. Hundreds died in the ensuing firefight.

OFFICIAL BLUNDERS

A year on, the people of Beslan still have dozens of
unanswered questions. Many relatives say the official
response to the siege was inept, badly-organized and
heavy-handed.

The Beslan Mothers' Committee, a support group had
gathered about 500 signatures by Thursday on a petition
appealing to foreign countries to grant them asylum.
Some members of the group are to meet Putin on Friday.

"We have lost hope for an honest investigation
into the reasons ... for our tragedy and we do not want
to live any longer in a country where human life means
nothing," they said.

"What happened with the hostages
was like cattle to the slaughter. The majority of those
killed were blown up, shot by tanks or grenade-launchers
or burned by flamethrowers."

Two official inquiries into the tragedy
have still not published their reports, and no senior
official has been punished for incompetence.

Officials have denied the operation was botched. Dozens
of police and troops were killed trying to rescue children
from the school in a hail of gunfire.

SCIENTISTS have created a "miracle
mouse" that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly
damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries
that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.

The experimental animal is unique among mammals in
its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail.

The researchers have also found that
when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary
mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.

The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could
one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged
organs, opening up a new era in medicine.

Details of the research will be presented next week
at a scientific conference on ageing, Strategies for
Engineered Negligible Senescence, at Cambridge University.
Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at the Wistar
Institute, an American biomedical research centre, says
that the ability of mice at her laboratory to regenerate
appears to be controlled by about a dozen genes.

She is still researching their exact functions, but
it seems almost certain that humans have comparable
genes.

"We have experimented with amputating or damaging
several different organs, such as the heart, toes, tail
and ears, and just watched them regrow," she said.
"It is quite remarkable. The only organ that did
not grow back was the brain.

Heber-Katz made her discovery when she noticed that
the identification holes that scientists punch in the
ears of experimental mice healed without any signs of
scarring.

The self-healing mice, from a strain known as MRL,
were then subjected to a series of surgical procedures.
In one the mice had their toes amputated - but the digits
grew back, complete with joints.

In another test some of the tail was cut off but also
regenerated. Then the researchers used a cryoprobe to
freeze parts of the animals' hearts, only to see these
grow back again. A similar phenomenon was observed when
the optic nerve was severed and the liver partially
destroyed.

Heber-Katz will describe some of her findings at the
Cambridge conference and plans to publish her results
in a research paper. "We have found that the MRL
mouse seems to have a higher rate of cell division,"
she said. "Its cells live and die faster and get
replaced faster. That seems to be linked to the ability
to regenerate."

The researchers suspect that the same genes could confer
greater longevity and are measuring the animals' survival
rate. The mice are, however, only 18 months old and
the normal lifespan is two years so it is too early
to reach conclusions.

Scientists have long known that less complex creatures
have an impressive ability to regenerate. Many fish
and amphibians can regrow internal organs or even whole
limbs.

Humans can regenerate their liver provided at least
a quarter remains intact, as well as their blood and
outer skin, but no other organs regrow.

This is probably because, although most mammalian cells
start off with the potential to develop into any cell
type, they soon become very specialised. This allows
mammals to develop more complex brains and bodies but
deprives them of the power of regeneration.

By contrast, if a newt loses a limb then cells around
the injury revert back into so-called stem cells. These
can develop into whatever types of cell are needed,
including bone, skin or nerves.

MIAMI - Tropical Storm Lee formed
Wednesday in the central Atlantic, but posed no threat
to land, forecasters said.

At 5 p.m. EDT, Lee was about 900 miles east of Bermuda
and moving north-northeast at 12 mph, according to the
National Hurricane Center in Miami. On this track, the
five-day forecast projected the storm would stay far
from land.

The tropical storm had top sustained winds of 40 mph,
just above the 39 mph threshold to be classified as
a tropical storm.

Lee was the 12th named storm of the unusually active
Atlantic hurricane season. Typically, there are only
four to five named storms by late August, according
to the hurricane center. Hurricane season began June
1 and runs through November.

SHANGHAI - China evacuated more
than 790,000 people as powerful Typhoon Talim
slammed into its east coast after barreling across Taiwan,
where it left three dead and dozens injured.

Talim was forecast to be the strongest storm to hit
China this season and the observatory in Fujian province
issued its highest-level alert, warning of potential
landslides, flooding and widespread damage.

With a radius of 250 kilometres (155 miles), Talim
was packing centre winds of up to 144 kilometres (86
miles) per hour on Thursday, according to the central
weather bureau in Taiwan.

The China Meteorological Association said the storm
made landfall at Putian city in Fujian late afternoon,
bringing torrential rain and strong winds.

State television showed rising seas off the coast of
Fujian as rains hammered coastal roads, but winds did
not appear as strong as they were in Taiwan where three
people died and 59 were injured on Wednesday and Thursday.

Nearly 500,000 people have been evacuated in Fujian
and another 291,000 from neighbouring Zhejiang province,
according to local officials, while some 30,000 fishing
vessels returned to harbour.

Most flights from Fujian's capital Fuzhou were cancelled
Thursday and schools province-wide have been ordered
to close until Monday, state television said.

Talim is "probably the strongest typhoon China
will experience in terms of wind this summer,"
said National Meteorological Centre expert Zhang Ling.

Wang Dongfa, head of Zhejiang's meteorological bureau,
said they expect the typhoon to focus on Fujian but
nevertheless warned of torrential rain to Wenzhou, Taizhou
and Ningbo cities and surrounding areas.

East and southeast China are prone to typhoons and
have been pummeled by dozens over the past 50 years.

Talim churned through Taiwan Wednesday but by late
Thursday had largely left the island as it churned toward
China.

Two men drowned in southern Tainan and northern Miaoli
counties while a 60-year-old woman was hit by lightning
in the southern Changhua county, the National Fire Agency
said.

Offices, schools and financial markets closed in Taiwan,
all domestic flights were canceled and many trains and
international air services were delayed.

An air raid drill slated for Friday in Taipei was postponed
until next week.

Electricity was cut to 1.7 million
homes but most were expected to be reconnected before
the end of the day.

In Taichung, a bridge connecting Kukuan, a popular
hot spring, was submerged by flash floods, prompting
the evacuation of hundreds of tourists.

In the northeastern county of Ilan, powerful waves
smashed into the port of Wushi which was closed by the
authorities.

Among those injured were eight prisoners and a policeman,
hurt when their van rammed a crash barrier.

In the capital, where the rain and winds were less
severe than elsewhere, bars, karaoke lounges and restaurants
were crowded as people took advantage of the national
holiday declared as a result of Talim.

Most air and land traffic was expected to return to
normal later Thursday as the typhoon moved away.

Comment: It
seems China didn't have any problem evacuating over
790,000 people, yet the US government couldn't even
get roughly 500,000 people out of New Orleans?

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador
-- Salvadoran authorities activated emergency plans
Tuesday as a western volcano continued to spew gas and
vapor in what experts said was a "significant increase"
in activity.

The renewed energy was first detected on Saturday,
when experts from the National Service of Earth Studies
witnessed 17 small earthquakes around the Ilamatepec
volcano, said agency director Antonio Arenas.

On Monday, scientists began to observe incandescent
rocks in a 2,150-square-foot area near where columns
of gas and vapor reached to 3,280 feet, Arenas said.

"The volcano is showing a significant increase
in activity, both in the number of seismic events as
well as in the amount of energy being liberated,"
said Salvadoran Interior Minister Rene Figueroa.

Pope
Benedict XVI told Catholics to have more babies "for
the good of society," saying that some countries
were being sapped of energy because of low birth rates.

"Having children is a gift that brings life and
well-being to society," he told about 15,000 people
at his weekly audience in the Vatican, to which he arrived
by helicopter from his summer residence southeast of
Rome.

He said the decline in the number of births "deprives
some nations of freshness and energy and of hopes for
the future incarnate in children."

The pope also spoke of "the security, the stability
and the force of a numerous family."

Although the Vatican bans all forms of articial contraception,
this is widely ignored even in predominantly Catholic
countries such as Italy and Spain, which have some of
the lowest birth rates in the world.

The pontiff regretted that God is "unhappily often
excluded or ignored" in many societies.

"A sound society certainly is born out of the
commitment of all of its members, but it also has a
need of the blessing and support of God," he said.